New news summary
- 11 May 07, 01:21 PM
Viewers in the Birmingham area may have noticed something different at 8pm on BBC One.
It's a short summary of the day's news (which you can click here to watch), presented by Natasha Kaplinsky. We're piloting it in that area, in the hope that it will be commissioned to go national later in the year.
The summary is above and beyond current BBC output, and came out of a desire to attract people who might not traditionally watch BBC news, particularly younger adults.
Inevitably, some papers have got the wrong end of the stick and claimed it is a case of the BBC "dumbing down". One article even ended with the line "The BBC still intends to continue with the Ten O'Clock News" (which I happen to edit) as if we would ever consider scrapping the programme in favour of a one minute summary!
BBC News is not dumbing down in any way - as anyone who saw yesterday's comprehensive coverage of Tony Blair's departure plans will have seen.
What we do understand, is that the audience is fracturing as never before - different groups have different needs - and the BBC needs to be able to speak to them all. That doesn't mean the summary will be the Daily Star on air, but it does mean that we will explore some areas that are not in our main programmes.
I hope that people who like their news pure and traditional will understand that because we use new programmes to appeal to different groups, does not mean that the Ten O'Clock News will be any less serious.
Craig Oliver is editor of BBC News at Six and BBC News at Ten
